


All Heroes Fall

by halotolerant



Category: Atlantis (BBC)
Genre: Backstory, Epic Poetry, Jealousy, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Atlantis, Hercules discovered several things he had not previously known. </p><p>Such as, love wasn’t something for song and theatre only. Or at least, song and theatre couldn’t, no matter how many gongs and wails and harp-strings you put into it, represent the sheer brilliance and awful terror of love, which found you whether you wanted it to or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Heroes Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Ummmmm, so I was basically struck by Hercules and Pythagoras living together, and decided to explore how maybe that might have happened. Also I love Mark Addy. Hence, fic!
> 
> I have followed the series' example and randomly thrown bits of Ancient Greek culture/myth/history into this without regard for timeline or context. Thus I am using the terms _erastes_ and _eromenos_ (for 'lover' and 'beloved') between a mythological character and a historical one without necessarily any of social context normally implied. And Hercules is still from Yorkshire... Oh show, I already love you *g*

There has never been a hero whose story ended well. 

Knowing this, when Hercules took a passage to Atlantis he did not tell the ship’s captain his real name. His deeds were still, then, being told in song and theatre (or, at least, the versions of his deeds that song and theatre had created - twelve tasks sound a bit less impressive when there are five of them, no hounds of hell and an important subplot about having staked a lot of gambling debts – double or nothing – on getting them done.) He did not want word to get back on how his tale finished; alone, exiled, with nothing to his name. 

Megara had thrown him out because apparently he wasn’t the man she’d fallen in love with, whatever that meant. Increasingly, he’d wondered whether the man she’d fallen for had been in the man in the stories, and never him at all, even when he was young and strong.

Anyway, leaving her, leaving Thebes and leaving another pile of debt combined handily, and he’d taken that ship across the wine dark sea to Atlantis, only half-telling himself he sought adventure rather than retirement. 

For he had believed that his story had ended. 

He’d never, even in the old days, been the kind of hero who quested for love. That was the sort of soft-making nonsense that got you killed or humiliated or worse. Megara had been beautiful and had made his blood run hot, and other men envied him her; all that was fair enough, none of it was love. 

In Atlantis, Hercules discovered several things he had not previously known. Such as, Atlantis sent out seven of its citizens to a bloody man-eating bull-monster every year (would have preferred to know that before setting sail). Such as, Atlantis had quite serious drinking-gambling-carousing laws enforced by patrolling tigers (why the entire population hadn’t actually swum to the mainland by now, he didn’t know). 

Such as, love wasn’t something for song and theatre only. Or at least, song and theatre couldn’t, no matter how many gongs and wails and harp-strings you put into it, represent the sheer brilliance and awful terror of love, which found you whether you wanted it to or not. 

“But I need a protector!” the young man had said, imploring, waving the sheaf of papers he was clutching under Hercules’ nose, as if Hercules could read or something ridiculous like that. “I need to do my work, but at the academy they just bully me all day, push me about and make me do _sports_ ” – he made the activity sound like it involved dung. Or attack tigers. “And I can’t go home, you know I can’t. My Step-Father...” and his bottom lip wobbled.

“Aye, I know,” Hercules had agreed, and sighed, placing his hand on Pythagoras’ back comfortingly. They’d met at the gaming tables, where Hercules was gaming like any normal person, and Pythagoras was doing some kind of mathematics about dice-rolls and wanted to see ‘real world examples’ and, to cut a long story short, Hercules had saved him from One-Eyed Tarsus, who’d been not all that impressed by having a winning roll picked up, examined and declared (with the happiness of one who has solved a problem) to be loaded. 

Pythagoras was strange, demanding, intermittently annoying, young, generous and oddly good-looking, when you saw him smile. He was funny, interesting and ridiculously clever.  And he wanted Hercules to be his _erastes_. Urgently. 

“You can live with me, alright?” Hercules told him. “And if people want to say you’re my _eromenos_ , let them. But you don’t have to... I don’t expect you to...”

Pythagoras, looking up at him, had held his gaze, dark-eyed and intense. Licked his lips. Put his hand up along Hercules’ arm, felt the swell of his bicep. 

“What if I want to?” Pythagoras asked him. 

Hercules fell. Further and faster than he’d known was possible.

Maybe the songs were wrong, he'd thought. Maybe there were safe harbours and happy homecomings. Precious prizes, warm welcomes. 

They’d never formalised the arrangement beyond the conversation that day when Pythagoras had moved in. Never said the words again, never spoken of anything between them. 

Hercules had never learnt the words for love, and if Pythagoras had it seemed he’d long replaced them in his head with numbers. 

But they were tender together, and Hercules did not fear.

And so the years passed, and their shared rooms became a home, and they grew in familiarity and comfort. Pythagoras teased that Hercules was getting fat, and Hercules teased that Pythagoras would have triangles for eyes soon enough, for all he kept studying them. 

They were happy. And Hercules, who had listened to enough songs to know better, forgot that it is the happy with which the gods most delight to toy. Forgot that the sky can fall on anyone. 

Or indeed a hero, a new, young, handsome, muscular hero, can fall through the roof and into your lover’s arms and remind him what heroism ought to look like. 

There has never been a hero whose story ended well. For Hercules it is half curse, half consolation.

 

 

 


End file.
